What is ghosting ? What is tacky sublimation paper ? When do you need tacky sublimation paper ?

What is ghosting ? What is tacky Dye sublimation transfer paper? When do you need tacky sublimation paper ?

There are two main types of sublimation paperin the market now, the “high-speed”(in China we call it “quick-dry” or “fast-dry”), and the “Tacky” (Sticky)sublimation paper.

You could find many descriptions and instructions about the high-speed sublimation paper, but the tacky sublimation paper, you could only find the result that it is used to prevent the transfer from ghosting, especially used for elastic(stretch)textile. Some clients are confused about whether choose the high-speed sublimation transfer paper ,or the tacky paper. 

Today we are going to talk about the tacky sublimation paper completely, hope this article can help you.

1.What is ghosting in sublimation transfer ?

Ghosting is a double image in sublimation transfer result. After the sublimation transfer is finished, if you see a light shadow in your result, that is ghosting.

How does the ghosting comes ? There are mainly three ways :

1).You print something like a tile where the sublimation transfer paper overhangs the object a little. When you press, ink from the overhang portion transfers either to the upper or lower platen, depending on how you are pressing the item. Now you put a shirt or anything else under the press, and it comes in contact with the ink that transferred from the previous press, it will ghost onto the new item.

2). You place your dye sublimation paper on a preheated item. As soon as the sublimation transfer paper gets warm from the preheated item, it starts transferring. If you lay the sublimation paper down then move it to adjust position, it can ghost.

3).The third reason that causes ghost is lifting the press up too fast, image drops back down. When we lift the press up, it creates some vacuum, and drop the image back down, when that happens, it shifts the media, causing the ink to transfer to another areas .

The first two types of ghosting is easy to solve, you put a teflon of oil paper during the transfer, or after you preheat the t-shirt, wait until the shirt cools down and then start the transfer process. But for the third one, it is not that easy to solve. So many clients turns to Tacky Sublimation Paper.

2. What is tacky sublimation paper ?

Tacky sublimation paper is one type of sublimation paper, the difference is that it has a tackified coating. The tackified coating will be activated by heat. After the tackified coating is activated, it will adhere to the textile very firmly, so after the transfer is finished and when you lift the press up, the paper will still firmly adhere to the textile, it prevents the paper and textile from moving, the ghosting will not occur.

The tacky paper is mostly used in stretch material such as lycra, the stretch material has a elastic, it is much easier moving during the transfer. But even though you are using the stretch material , doesn’t mean you still need to us tacky sublimation paper, that depends on the heat press machine.

3.When do you need the Tacky Sublimation Paper ?

The third reason that causes the ghosting is because your lift the press up, the paper and textile will also go up with the heat press (electrostatic effect), so if you lift the press up too fast, it creates some vacuum , and drop the image back down, when that happens, it shifts the media, causing the ink to transfer to another area.

One thing you could notice from the above , is that the ghosting is caused when you are using the flat-bed heat press. Only in flat-bed heat press, you must lift up the press by yourself, or automatically.

But some clients are using the calendar, rotary heat press (roll to roll), this type of heat press is doing roll sublimation paper to roll textile transfer, the whole process is automatically, you only need to set up the sublimation paper and textile at the beginning , and then leave it alone to do the sublimation transfer. In the whole heat press process, the roll machine provide much control to the paper and textile, the paper and the textile, they are firmly stick to each other from the beginning to the end, there’s no chance that they will separate in the process. So there’s no chance that the ghosting will come. In that case, normal sublimation paper could do the job very well, tacky sublimation paper is unnecessary even though the textile has elastic. (if you are using this type ,you will understand what we are talking about, if you don’t, you could watch those videos about rotary heat press transfer).

So tacky sublimation paper is only used in : First, you are doing with flat-bad heat press, second ,the textile is stretch material, or it is easy to move.

But some clients still use tacky sublimation paper, maybe they were told by others that in the whole market, people are using tacky sublimation paper, or there is sychology effection in their mind that tacky sublimation paper could do better job than high-speed paper, because the tacky paper provides a 100% security to my transfer that the ghosting will not occur any more. We suggest if you are using the tacky sublimation paper, but actually in our opinion high-speed paper is enough in your job, you could make a small test with the high-speed paper, a few test need only a little investment,  but if the test is succeed , it will help you save more cost and help your company become more competitive in your market.

4.What’s the difference of High-Speed Sublimation Paper and Tacky Sublimation Paper?

1). The price of tacky sublimation paper is higher than high-speed paper.

2) The tacky sublimation paper dries slower than high-speed paper. Our high-speed paper dries completely in 2 minutes, but the tacky sublimation paper dries in 3-4 minutes.

3) The transfer yield is different, our high-speed sublimation paper could deliver the 96.% ink to the substrate, the tacky sublimation paper is 95.7% .

Whether if you are using the high-speed paper or the tacky paper, hope this article will help you know more about them. If you are still confused of which type of paper you should use, do some test yourself.  Tack a real action will help you the most !